Ontario’s most revered premier was in full flight at a gathering of Queen’s Park old-timers this fall as he hurled his rhetorical challenge at those around him. TVO, in honour of Steve Paikin’s anniversary, had gathered all of Ontario’s living premiers in one place — a first and last occasion and a tribute to the universal affection that TVO’s star elicits across generations and party lines. Mike Harris, perhaps wisely, chose to participate by video.

Each of the veteran pols amused the multi-partisan crowd with the standard self-deprecating anecdotes and gentle jabs at competitors. Bob Rae’s “Welcome, my fellow New Democrats,” followed by, “And welcome, too, to my fellow Liberals . . . and to . . . my fellow Red Tories,” each line delivered with the pause and exquisite timing of the skilled soft-shoe performer, brought the house down. The event came on the heels of Dalton McGuinty’s awkward exit, chased from office by his inability to manage a minority parliament. He smiled gamely through a series of digs at his self-inflicted lame duck status.

But it was the dean of the elite club at 83 years old, Ontario’s last great Tory premier, Bill Davis, who stole the evening. Despite fighting a respiratory infection, and on strict orders from his doctor to avoid stress, he delighted the crowd with his reminiscences, and later beguiled a smaller group of fans with his acerbic views on Ontario today.

Davis’s outburst was provoked by a question about the inevitability of an election. “Why?” he asked. He could not understand why we needed to be subjected to another campaign. His loud query about phone skills was a delightful reminder of Davis at his faux naif best. It was directed at the ex-premiers and the bevy of current politicians surrounding them. “Why do people find it so hard to build friendships across the aisle these days?!?” he asked with the exasperation of a veteran teacher addressing recalcitrant students.

Why indeed?

Conventional wisdom is that today’s harsher partisanship precludes being seen supping with the enemy. A corollary is that the end of night sittings, and the boozy camaraderie they engendered, meant that relationships were stinted for this generation of politicians. That is mostly nonsense.

Anyone whipped by the razor sharp attack of Stephen Lewis at his height — as Bill Davis was in Question Periods ad nauseam — could easily have retreated sulking into his partisan bunker, and be excused for so doing. And if you were the target, hard to forgive. The Star, the Globe and the then new and perpetually angry Toronto Sun amplified their political thunderbolts with coverage much more intense than any today.

Those who seek to defend this failure of political leadership also claim that these are harsher ideological times than then, the policy gaps are too wide to be bridged. This claim merely reflects the promoter’s dishonesty or bad memory. Ontario Liberals in Bob Nixon’s day were far more a socially conservative rural rump than the urban progressive party of today. The NDP was a party of rigid orthodoxy on issues from corporate taxation, to land use, to labour law.

Yes, the Conservatives, who ran the Davis premier’s office and inner cabinet were milder on social issues than Tim Hudak’s hardliners today. But Davis’s party activists’ views on “women’s libbers,” bilingualism, homosexuals, Sunday shopping, Quebec’s demands, Catholic education, immigration, seatbelts and unions — among a much longer list of social prejudices — imposed real limits on his political freedom.

So the rhetoric was as fierce, the policy divides were as real, and the media’s incentive to promote division as powerful as today.

Yet Ontario, led by Davis, Lewis and Nixon, invented the modern minority government. Yes, federal Liberals staggered through the mid-1960s in a series of productive minority governments. But they were disputatious daily and unstable week by week. Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker detested each other, and their lieutenants mirrored that contempt. By contrast, for six years from 1975 to 1981 Ontario was led by a surprisingly stable set of minority parliaments. They set the stage for the Peterson-Rae Accord government that followed a decade later.

So why cannot this generation of political leaders, leading a province facing a more severe recession than those inflicted in 1973 and ’79 and ’91 — which their predecessors had to manage during their governments — find sufficient common ground to avoid yet another election?

At one level, the management of minority government is no more complicated than table manners in a large family. You can’t always go first, you can’t always get what you want. Dinner table decorum is governed by a broad understanding of flexible rules: no discussion of religion or politics, no sneering at a sib’s broken heart.

Sometimes a stern parent plays the role of Speaker — but as in a functioning family, in a productive legislature, it is peer pressure more than parental discipline that ensures the institution doesn’t descend into the embarrassing schoolyard scuffles of Parliament today.

Minorities require a determination to find policy agreement, not difference, to bridge gaps, not exacerbate them. Ontario Conservatives were not naturally inclined in 1975 to impose rent controls on landlordswho, in many communities, were their own party activists, and 1985 New Democrats swallowed much weaker restitution for injured workers than they had campaigned on and believed was just. Yet each side often accepted less than half a loaf to keep the legislature functioning.

Perhaps it will take another indecisive outcome in a provincial campaign to so discipline this generation. But we will have wasted tens of millions of dollars on an unnecessary election, and almost another year of in effective government getting there. The bureaucracy is very sensitive to its political masters’ signals, and the public service has been treading water since the spring of 2011. None of the bold initiatives of the first two terms of the McGuinty government has advanced since the Liberals’ bitter near-defeat. Some policy arenas — health care and education most famously — have gone backward. The public service will continue to push paper vigorously for perhaps another year with little to show for it if we go through another election, and another session of a do-nothing Ontario Parliament. This political fecklessness as the province is still trying to climb out of the most severe recession of our lifetimes is galling.

Would it be unreasonable to expect that the new premier of Ontario, immediately after their first coffee on Monday morning, Jan. 28, to pick up the phone and make a serious offer to each of the Opposition leaders. If, as seems likely, it is either Kathleen Wynne or Sandra Pupatello, perhaps she might start with the more tractable of the two opponents, Andrea Horwath. It would be surprising if any combination of those three women were less successful than McGuinty in reaching across the aisle. Horwath wants action on job creation, on a development plan for the North that respects First Nations and its communities. She could be an ally on pension reform and the Lankin Commission’s recommendations on social assistance reform.

Hudak would be a tougher partner to bring to a deal, trapped as he is in the Harris mini-me role he has created as his tough guy persona. Still, he wants action on public sector pay, on opening Ontario’s beer and liquor markets and on privatization in several sectors, including power. None of these should be anathema at first blush to a Liberal premier. Premier Pupatello or Wynne could polish her business credentials by trying to do a deal on that agenda.

The point surely is that leadership demands that such efforts at bridge-building be seriously attempted before launching another, probably pointless, election. A serious attempt means private discussions with no more than six people in the room, with proposals designed to give one’s partner political ground to stand on. Not serious is defined by the adolescent public huffing and blowing the Liberals indulged in following the last election.

Leadership is also about telling your own tribe that compromise is necessary, that shared policy achievements are what the province has the right to expect, even demand, in times of deep uncertainty.

So if you encounter your MPP over the holidays ask, “Are you willing to really try to avoid an election, to find common ground for Ontario’s sake?!?” Then remind them of Ontario’s greatest living premier’s exasperated appeal, “It’s not so hard to pick up the phone, for pete’s sake!”

Robin Sears is a principal of the Earnscliffe Strategy Group. He served as Bob Rae’s chief of staff during the Peterson-Rae Accord years.

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